When I Empty My Recycle Bin.......

on my desktop, where does the stuff go? surely it ends up somewhere.

 

In my documents file so I can snoop on you!

 

It stays on your hard drive but progressively gets overwritten with other files in time... NOTHING ever completely goes from your harddrive and can (with the right software) be recovered a la Gary Glitter et al

 

Unless you then fill you HDD up with other rubbish

 

so if i accidentally delete something, theoretically i can retrieve it?

 

Yeah but you need the relevant software and only if it's been recently deleted otherwise it gets overwritten and corrupted.

 

What have ya deleted? We may know how to help...

 

Unless you don;t want it back , in which case you can get software that'll make sure it's gone.

 

merely a hypothetical question. i burned 10 gig of music onto discs today, deleted it all and then wondered where it went. apparently to jimbo.

 

I wondered the same thing.

I'm a little worried now that Jimbo gets all my deleted stuff.....

 

Not all of it. He shares some of it with the rest of us.

 

Oh no!

 

Now I know why Jimbo has been quiet lately it was all those p... p... p..errr films I burned and deleted off my harddrive last week!!

 

I have a shredder that erases all my files so they dont back up on my hard drive and take up extra room

Its great for removing information that you dont want anyone to ever see

 

Don't be fooled Richie, if can be recovered I can assure you!

 

I'm sure it could if you had uber specialist stuff
But no-one with basic PC skills would ever locate it, and thats all that matters


The government haven't raided my PC yet, so I'm still safe

 

Very simply; It's all to do with how files are written to disk. Under most Operating Systems there is an index which points to where the files are on the disk. When you delete the file only the index changes ( marking the file area(s) as free space ). The best example of this is when you move a file - if it's on the same physical disc then the move will be very quick as only the index will be updated with the new "location", if you are moving to another disc then the whole file has to be moved and will take a lot longer.

 

LORD-WIZ IN ELEPHANT PORN SCANDAL

 

Cant say I'm surprised by that

 

so eventually my pc could fill up with these deleted files? 10 gig is a lot of stuff to just disappear into nothing.

 

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/question578.htm

No it won't fill up because the old 'deleted' files get overwritten in time.